Tiny lady beetles investigate their new home — an eastern hemlock tree at Crystal Spring Farm in Brunswick — after traveling from Pennsylvania on May 31. One beetle can be seen as a black dot on the end of the clothespin. John Lichter photo May 31, 2024: In a cardboard box in a car driving north from Pennsylvania.
Two lady beetles (Sasajiscymnus tsugae), jostled by a bit of wheel wobble, give up on napping and talk. LB #1: “Where do you think we’re going? First our colony lived in a bright-lit room, a lab, they called it, then this box. And now we’re moving; I think we’re going north.
” LB #2: “How do you know?” “I’ve always known where I’m going.” “Well, now I’m awake, I’m hungry.” “Me, too.
” “Rumor has it that being boxed like this means going woolly wolfing.” “Yeah, Big-Beetle flew in last week with these wild stories of a place with all the Adelgids you can eat. Every day.
” “May it be so.” • • • Ground time, Brunswick, Crystal Spring Farm Trailhead, near the Settlemire Community Garden. The call came in at 4:55 p.
m. “They’re here,” said Director of Conservation Margaret Gerber of the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust. We drove over to meet them.
Joined by BTLT board member and photographer John Lichter, we peered into a just-opened cardboard box and welcomed 1,000 lady beetles to the Maine woodlands. It had been a long ride from Tree Savers, the Pennsylvania laboratory, where these beetles were raised, and evening ne.
